The Prometheus Theory
I've lived quite the fast life. I've done many things, lived in many different parts of the world, experienced great success and failure, lots of joy and lots of pain. Now, I live a very simple and rhythmic life with my wife and dog. I prefer my life this way, it matches with me.
But I found that with this type of life, unresolved wounds tend to re-surface in the quiet. So in my attempts to understand and heal from my own unresolved wounds, I went on a long journey of educating myself, reflecting, observing the patterns in my life, the patterns I began noticing in others, and from it, I developed a framework I call "The Prometheus Theory".
Here is the idea:
We, human beings, developed an incredible ability to a scale that profoundly distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom: our extraordinary symbolic intelligence. What is symbolic intelligence you say? It is the capacity to create, understand, combine, and transform representations that stand for something beyond themselves, allowing what is absent, abstract, imagined, or possible to influence thought, feeling, communication and action in the present. What does this mean? Well, it means we can remember the past, imagine the future, think about meaning, and physically, emotionally, and mentally suffer over things that are not happening now, but are happening in the mind.
Our survival systems evolved to respond rapidly to perceived danger. But our MIND can make something absent feel present again, like a rejection from years ago, or something someone said, something we fear might happen, or some conclusion we made about ourselves. When we think about these things, the body can react as though the danger is present again, activating survival responses even when the original danger is no longer physically there.
I started noticing that a lot of the 'danger' our survival systems seem to organize around touches two very basic needs: belonging & agency.
Belonging is basically: Do I have a place here? Am I wanted? Am I accepted? Am I enough to belong without performing?
Agency is: Can I choose, respond, refuse, act, influence what happens, and participate in my own life?
When either of these feels seriously threatened, the body can organize around survival in an attempt to protect us, like an intelligent protective function. It got me thinking about the ego, and how the ego may be part of this protective function trying to shield us from threats to belonging and agency, not for your happiness or fulfillment, but for your continued existence, to keep you alive in the only way it knows how.
I also came to see belonging and agency as two of the major dimensions around which 'identity' can organize. When both are relatively secure, identity tends to be more stable and flexible. When belonging is insecure but agency is available, we may compensate by increasing agency through performance, achievement, intelligence, usefulness, distance, control, or other capacities, using them to try to manufacture belonging for ourselves. When agency is insecure but belonging is available, we may compensate by increasing belonging through relationships, groups, closeness, usefulness, or attachment to people who seem able to provide safety, direction, or effective action, using belonging to try to compensate for impaired agency. And when both belonging AND agency are badly impaired, identity can become heavily organized around survival itself..
If you live in survival long enough, survival can start feeling like who you ARE. I call this the "defended identity". It's when a way of surviving becomes so fused with identity that anything threatening that identity can feel deeply threatening to the self.
For example, imagine a child with inattentive caregivers. Their needs are often not met, complying does not seem to change anything, and the child does not feel wanted or loved. At some point, they discover that aggression gets a response. It may not be the kind of attention they wanted, but it is still attention, so they begin relying on aggression more often because, in that environment, it works better than the alternatives. Over time, what began as a strategy can harden into identity, and the defended identity fully forms. They begin to experience themselves as the fighter, and threats are dealt with aggression and force because those have become the way they know how to create impact.
Another example, imagine a child whose caregivers are unpredictable and emotionally unavailable. They learn that asking directly for what they need does not work well, but being easy, helpful, agreeable, and/or attentive to the caregiver's mood, fawning, keeps things safe and sometimes receives approval. Over time, that strategy, like with the other child, can harden into identity. They are always there to help when they don't really want to, saying no becomes incredibly hard even when they want to say no, and having needs of their own can feel incredibly threatening.
These are just two examples of how survival can fuse with identity. And if there is a threat to that identity, the fighter who experiences themselves as strong may react intensely to situations that make them feel weak or helpless, because the identity itself has become tied to feeling strong. In the same way, the giver who experiences themselves as the "good kid" may react intensely to situations that make them feel selfish, disappointing, etc.
So with all this, what I think I may have found is a structure through which symbolic threat organizes survival, survival becomes identity, and identity continues protecting us from losses we have not fully grieved.
I also noticed how survival responses seem to relate quite strongly to patterns of unfinished grief. We often hear grief described through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I don't think grief moves through these in a neat or rigid sequence (this is known), but I started noticing an interesting relationship between survival responses and the way grief can remain unfinished. We usually think grief only comes from big losses like the death of a loved one, but I have come to realize that grief can also appear through losses we may not be fully aware of, including losses connected to the two needs of belonging and agency.
This made me wonder whether some experiences of depression, persistent anger, or anxiety may sometimes contain an element of grief, especially when the body still seems organized around something unresolved. And then we can ask whether that unresolved loss is connected to belonging, agency, or both.
There is a lot more to the framework than this, but I think this is enough to put out here for now. I'm more interested in seeing whether the basic structure makes sense to people.
I call the framework "The Prometheus Theory" because Prometheus gave humanity fire. Humans and our ancestors depended on fire across unimaginable stretches of time, and I think those conditions may have helped accelerate the symbolic capacities that eventually made human life so distinctive from other animal species. Our ability to remember, imagine, plan, create meaning, build language, make art, form civilizations, and go from living in caves to exploring space is inseparable from this symbolic capacity. But in the myth, Prometheus is chained and his liver is eaten by an eagle every day, only to grow back and be eaten again, an endless recurring suffering. Symbolic intelligence is our greatest gift, but it also gives us the ability to make what is absent present again and again. We can re-live the past, anticipate the future, imagine threats, replay rejection, and keep old wounds psychologically alive long after the original event is over.
You could say we have the minds of gods in the bodies of beasts. Genesis 3:22 says: "Behold, the man has become as one of us, to know good and evil." Our symbolic capacities accelerated enormously, while our animal bodies remain organized through survival systems inherited from a much older evolutionary history. I think part of the human condition comes from this mismatch.
But, I also think there is a way through it.
As I mentioned, there is much more to "The Prometheus Theory". But I think this is enough for one post. Maybe I'll write up more of it another time. For now, I just wanted to put the idea out into the world.. I hope it is useful to someone in some way. You can visit theprometheustheory.com for the rest of the framework if you're curious.